| The basis of microfluidics is the processing of the molecularly stored information of chemical and biological systems. To be effective, this requires that the systems be able to manipulate the molecules in a robust manner on both physical and information-based levels. This dissertation develops methods, technologies, and theory towards addressing this need.;Microfluidic systems are presented which are able to physically manipulate the chemical and biological samples, specifically through temporary and permanent encapsulations of cells in picoliter-scale droplet emulsions. Subsequently, technologies are demonstrated to generate an arbitrary sequence of droplets in an on-demand fashion, and a framework and theory developed to show the manner in which these physical manipulations can be transformed into the encoding and decoding of binary information into a stream of picoliter droplets. Finally, the application of these methods to more complex information processing modes in microfluidic systems, such as combinatoric analyses and the creation of micro-structured materials, is explored. |
